Right, of course. I was the support team for if it went badly.
Nut was such a good guy, and all he wanted in the world was to get into the Altus Space. I wanted to help him, I really did. I also wanted to bring this whole thing down.
—
After work, we all met up in the cafeteria and then walked back to the dorms together. As we were leaving, security checked my bag, and I did everything in my power to act like it was just another boring day. Laptop, great. Tampons, cool. SodaStream canister stuffed with highly flammable gas, also fine! Don’t worry about me, just the long, stringy redhead who is fascinated by this company’s mission and nonetheless planning to destroy it. I’m making a joke here, but honestly I was starting to feel a little bad about what I was doing. A lot of these people were . . . nice. And the research they were doing was amazing. And only hearing about it from one angle, Altus’s angle, was making me feel like maybe it wasn’t so bad. But it was. It was bad. Very bad. And if all went according to plan tonight, people besides me would know about it. I stashed my contraband and then went to meet with Sippy and Nut. Their room was neat and sparse, as were most rooms at Altus, and Nut did indeed have about twenty hand-knitted wool hats.
“Can I have one of these?”
“What? Why?” Peanut asked, laughing.
“I dunno, you have a lot of them. I get cold in my room sometimes.” This was a lie, but I was getting better at lying.
I picked one I hadn’t seen him wearing much, assuming that meant he wasn’t a huge fan of it. He told me to help myself.
“OK,” Peanut said after we’d all chatted a bit. “I just want to do this thing, let’s not push it back any further.”
“We got this, bud,” Sippy reassured him. “Just like we talked about. Your eyes are in your head, feel your body, and keep your bearings. We’ll go straight from the launch screen into the body.
“OK, dude, lie down,” Sippy said, handing the VR headset to Peanut. “Feel your body. Just like every other day of your life.”
Peanut slipped on the headset and lay down on his bed.
“OK, see y’all on the other side,” he said.
His body went suddenly still as he entered the Space. This was my first time watching someone go in. It’s so subtle, but still obvious—just the littlest adjustment upon their consciousness fleeing their body.
What we were hoping for was nothing. If, after a minute or two, we’d seen no reaction at all, then we’d know it had worked. He’d be in there and enjoying his first nightmare-free excursion in the Space. Then Sip and I could celebrate, even if Peanut was in another world for it.
And then his body cramped together like a fist. Sippy was at his side in an instant, pulling off the headset. Peanut came out of the Space with a rough and ragged scream.
Sippy’s voice got loud and strong, but still somehow gentle. “You’re out. It’s over. You’re here.” Peanut was crying now. I knelt down beside his bed and put my hand on his hand. He grabbed on and squeezed painfully tight.
“It’s all right. Remember, it was just in your mind,” I said, repeating his own empty words back to him.
“I’m . . . OK,” he said as he got his breathing under control. “Jesus, fuck,” he said quietly. “I wish I could explain to y’all what that’s like, but fuck FUCK!”
“Was it any different that time?” Sippy asked.
“Yeah, it was. Not better. But different, yeah. I don’t really want to tell you about it, though.”
“That took a lot, to go back in,” I said. “We don’t think any less of you . . .”
“Yeah, I fuckin’ get it!” He bit off the words. I lurched away from him. I listened back to my own words in my head. Even I, someone who literally didn’t use the Space, sounded like I was pitying him.
Immediately, he backtracked. “I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry I yelled.”
“No, it’s OK, I understand. I sounded like an asshole. I get it.”
He started crying then. The shock was wearing off, and now it was just the desperation of not being able to experience this amazing thing that no one else could stop talking about. I was honestly amazed he was brave enough to just sob in front of us both. I squeezed his hand and held my breath and felt my own tears coming down in sympathy.
“I think,” he said, “I think I just want to go to sleep. Can the three of us hang tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” Sippy and I said at the same moment.
“Yeah, of course,” I added.
“I’m still going to take this, though,” I said, touching the hat I was still wearing.
He laughed, though it wasn’t really funny.
I said my goodbyes—there wasn’t a lot of energy left for easy banter. I went by the rec room and saw that it was entirely empty. People were in the Space. Why wouldn’t they be? I grabbed the soda carbonator and a handful of condoms and went to my room, where I began the process of destroying poor Peanut’s hand-knitted wool hat. I tried not to think about the fact that his mom probably made it for him while I cut and picked until I got a loose thread that I could yank on. The entire hat was gone in a matter of minutes, reduced to two very long pieces of yarn that I then tied together. Next, I started unpacking and unrolling condoms. Unfortunately (for me anyway) they were lubricated. I screwed the hydrogen canister into the SodaStream and began the long, slow, boring, careful, dangerous work of filling fifteen condoms with hydrogen.
—
I had tested it, and the phone tried to send a text message for about a minute after I hit send. I also knew that there was
